Bullet-Eye - v0.12.1 - 6/16/23 - This guy and his SLOW updates!

[Mor'Ladim]

Thanks for that! Hopefully I fixed it, but I won't be able to update until I get home, unfortunately. I've also discovered a similar problem with one of the glove items, so I will get to work on that first thing in the morning. Thank you, once again!

Edit: And updated with the fixes!

[Mor'Ladim]

A very late update, yes? I didn't want to release an update until I had my planned 'at least 3 new weapons and 1 new sub-weapon plus equipment' in, but this update fixes a critical bug with the Riskbreaker Armor that causes the game to crash when in combat with Chaingunners. It would have bothered me all day if I didn't update now! This update also adds a new ability that can deflect projectiles back at attackers if timed right. Press UserKey2 to activate it! This also changes some of the skill settings, but I will need to refine them more later. Chaos Mode specifically, as I think it would be better to change the randomization to only spawn enemies of the same tier, and not any enemy. Otherwise there could be instances of maps like Dead Simple with nothing but Zombiemen!

2/15/17
-Fixed some issues with picking up certain pieces of gear.
-Lowered Bullet-Eye Mode weapon firing sound slightly.
-Text positions adjusted for equipment items to display more information. Some equipment pieces had their text changed slightly or have additional information.
-Weapon Enhancers gained with Energy Conversion Gloves now grant 20 Bullet-Eye Energy (Was 15), and 40 while Bullet-Eye Mode is active.
-Added new equipment.
-Forged Helmet sprite altered slightly.
-Scatter Bombs throwing range increased.
-Bullet-Eye Energy gained from picking up a powerup when already at L3 increased to 8. (Was 4)
-Increased Spread Shot damage slightly.
-Increased damage and radius of Storm Grenade projectiles.
-Changed skill levels and added new ones.
-Altered radius of some bigger enemies to help prevent issues where an enemy could get stuck in the Chaos Mode skill level.
-Barrier Gauntlets now defend against some Fire damage from Archviles.
-Fixed graphical bugs with some weapons.
-Added new tracks to the Bullet-Eye Mode pool.
-Fixed critical bug with Riskbreaker Armor and Chaingun Zombies. The game would crash when they entered their firing state while the armor was in use.
-Added Lost Soul support for Riskbreaker Armor.
-A few more weapons have been given new (temporary) HUD sprites.
-Added Volley Shot weapon.
-Added a new ability "Flash Guard". Pressing UserKey2 will allow you to create a short duration barrier that deflects projectiles back at an attacker.
-Made Bullet-Eye Mode activation more responsive.

[leodoom85]

I picked up the Hunting Laser only once and I noticed one thing. The laser, no matter which way you're facing, always go straight in parallel to the ground...I don't know if this is a bug or is intentional...This is when no monster is in sight

[Hetdegon]

I can confirm that, I happen to use hunting laser a lot. Can be tricky to get it out in certain terrains, but I kind of assumed it was a balance thing since it's homing.
Anyway didn't have time to comment on this lately, but been playing it for a while and it's pretty damn cool. Has that old-school arcadey feel which goes well with Doom's fast gameplay, and I love the visuals and sounds as well.

I do feel the Bullet-Eye mode might be a bit underpowered for maps with a lot of enemies (seems to take a couple shots to kill imps and quite a few for stuff above "demon" in terms of health...then again default Doom enemies are kind of damage-spongy. Works great on more vanilla maps but it sure struggles to keep up on stuff like Sunlust or such) but otherwise it's kinda satisfying overall.

I didn't try out the new weapons yet, but a build of hunting laser/buster/crush blash + mag shuriken/scatter bomb is really fun to go with, personally.

[Mor'Ladim]

I do feel the Bullet-Eye mode might be a bit underpowered for maps with a lot of enemies (seems to take a couple shots to kill imps and quite a few for stuff above "demon" in terms of health...then again default Doom enemies are kind of damage-spongy. Works great on more vanilla maps but it sure struggles to keep up on stuff like Sunlust or such) but otherwise it's kinda satisfying overall.

Thanks for the feedback and I am glad you are enjoying it! As for Bullet-Eye Mode, I also feel it is underpowered with certain map sets. Usually in maps that throw larger waves at you, I would only kill a small number of enemies compared to maps with average sized encounters. I plan to boost the damage a bit so it feels even more powerful and more rewarding to use.

Also, the Hunting Laser uses an old method of code I utilized on another unreleased item long ago. I plan to rework it so it is affected by pitch, and I may revamp the Chaser Missile, as it seems a little boring compared to some of the other weapons.

[Hetdegon]

Awesome. Looking forward to it!

[Atendega]

So is the Hunting Laser supposed to be a room-clearing, all-powerful death ray that vaporizes absolutely everything and makes every other weapon utterly obsolete? When upgraded, this thing makes Bullet-Eye mode look like a peashooter

[AndruEX]

About the Hunting Laser, its true that it feels like an unstoppable force fully upgraded along any equipment that increases the RoF, you might want to look at it given it overshadows most of the Main Weapons because most of the time it feels OP.

[Mor'Ladim]

If you all keep this up about the Hunting Laser, I may just end up developing mods for Duke Nukem 3D instead!

All joking aside, I am going to do some testing, but I believe a few solutions to the Hunting Laser problem would be to either:

1. Decrease the firing speed.
2. Decrease Hunting Laser DamageFactor for all enemies.
3. Change the number of projectiles spawned from an L3 Hunting Laser hit to randomly spawn 1-3 lasers, instead of a flat amount.

I am thinking a combination of 2 and 3 would be sufficient enough to keep it in line with the other weapons. I do not want to directly alter the damage of the weapon's projectiles itself, and instead alter DamageFactor on enemies, in case a player wishes to utilize a custom enemy WAD. Though, doing so would make it impossible to gain Bullet-Eye Energy through kills. I would like to keep it powerful enough to be viable, however, as it seems to be a favorite!

On the subject of custom enemies and Bullet-Eye Energy gains, I am planning to find alternate ways to gain Energy, or even release a separate version, so that players would be able to utilize more custom elements and not be so restricted in terms of using custom enemies. Perhaps I can make the separate version spawn a new item type that grants B-EE. Or even find out how to grant energy from a certain amount of kills in the map, items found, and secrets discovered. I am open to suggestions!

On another note, I plan to do something neat with sub-weapons down the road, so I hope you will enjoy what's to come!

As always, thank you for all of the feedback!

[Jigstraw]

Any chance you could make reflecting projectiles buff their damage? It feels like a useless ability right now, the delay makes it a bit difficult to time, and the payoff for successfully reflecting a projectile isn't anything to write home about either. I was just playing around with it for shits and giggles, and it's pretty fun to do, but actually killing anything with a reflected projectile is painfully slow because it takes like 2-3 imp fireballs to kill an imp, and I don't even know how many cacodemon projectiles to kill a caco. The risk of trying to reflect is far greater than the reward of succeeding. It's much better and easier to dodge, but I kinda don't want reflecting to just be a throwaway mechanic that's just there to add to the feature list, y'know? lol

[Mor'Ladim]

I added it to make it slightly easier to survive bigger waves, but it is a bit hard to time, I know. Perhaps I will increase the duration the shield is up, and adding more delay after it is finished, so it can't just be spammed indefinitely. I will also see about increasing the damage of reflected projectiles or releasing some homing projectiles instead. I'd like to also make equipment items for it, such as granting health after a successful block. Though, if it appears to be rarely used, then I will just remove it. I do want to add in a quick melee attack as well, so that could replace the Flash Guard instead, if again, it is rarely used.

Thanks for the feedback! I also completed another weapon, and it should be in the next update. I want to have at least 2 more, and 2+ new sub-weapons before I get another update out. Or I could just go with my plan to release micro updates whenever I have something ready, instead of causing users to wait so long like last time. Oh, I also wanted to make a poll regarding weapons.

[Hetdegon]

The hunting laser doesn't strike me as that overpowered. Then again I like to mix it up and change weapons (I really like the explosives such as buster). But I guess just decreasing rate of fire is fair.

[leodoom85]

The weapons like the Hunting Laser, for me, works in open areas and the Crush Blast in max level rocks in tight areas and also works for crowd control. It depends on the sitiation that you're facing, this mod has some tactical strategic gameplay.

[Deii]

Buster and crush blast. I think it's just a matter of personal preference but generally I never really like using these...they're still good though.
Like Leo put it, it all depends on the situation you're facing.

[Jigstraw]

I voted for blaze stream and scrap launcher. Scrap launcher has so much spread it's pretty useless at longer ranges even though it can still technically hit enemies at long range, but the blaze stream is superior to scrap launcher within scrap launcher's own effective range, since it has enemy penetration even at level 1, and does a much better job of flinchlocking enemies.